Er, yes I know that. That's why I said you could convert FLAC to ALAC. As they're both lossless codecs, there's no quality degradation in the conversion process.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superbass

In 20 years, do I want all of my music being stored in the digital equivalent of BETA tapes? Or the musical equivalent of .lwp files? I understand there'll probably be a converter created in that eventuality, which will be a pain in the ass.

The converter I posted earlier will do the job.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superbass

-it supports CUE sheets
-it includes MD5 hashes so you can check integrity of files very easily
-pipe support
-replay gain compatible
-it's still being actively developed, so improvements to metadata/tagging, for example, are reflected in the Codec
-it's open source
-it's supported in Linux

Most of that is irrelevant. If you convert to AIFF as an intermediate step, you can use wavegain to "replay gain" the file, then convert to ALAC. AIFF supports metadata so you shouldn't lose any in the conversion process.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superbass

Anyways, would it really be that difficult for Apple to implement?

No it wouldn't, but since they never, ever will it's better to use a solution that actually works rather than pointlessly whinging about it.

I must second the complaint about no FLAC support. It is not uncommon for labels to distribute music in this high fidelity format, and there's no good reason iTunes should not play it. It's quite unfortunate.

How big are these labels? Where are the tracks sold?

When it comes down to it, I really don't see much popular demand for FLAC.

I was just looking at the spotify interface design - it's icons' are just as monochrome, except for the "library" and "starred" icons, there is no colour at all, yet people don't seem to be up in arms or confused by this?

The spotify interface clearly takes it's lead from iTunes, just inverted.

If you'd like to invert your iTunes interface, quit iTunes and enter this in terminal...

I was just looking at the spotify interface design - it's icons' are just as monochrome, except for the "library" and "starred" icons, there is no colour at all, yet people don't seem to be up in arms or confused by this?

The spotify interface clearly takes it's lead from iTunes, just inverted.

Who has been recommending spotify as an alternative? You're the first to mention it in this thread.

Pearl Jam (everything)
David Byrne
Nine Inch Nails (Reznor's website states that over 20% of sales are FLAC)
Brian Eno
The Eagles
The Beatles (they sell a complete works in FLAC USB drive on their website)
Bonnaroo Festival (complete concerts from the past several festivals)
Tallis Scholars (complete works)
Paul McCartney (last couple albums)
Merge Records (sells everything as FLAC - you might recognize Arcade Fire, Superchunk and Caribou as some of their artists)

are just a few of the "big" artists who sell their music as FLAC. Check their websites. Also, there are a ton of smaller jazz labels releasing in FLAC. I don't listen to much top 40, so I don't know about the major labels, but they're not exactly the most progressive organizations out there. Sure they're not sold on iTunes, but that's a given.

Fluke won't make songs play on an iPod, and still has pretty limited functionality in terms of tagging, album art, etc.

There's really no reason to continue with the back-and-forth and make excuses for apple, it's probably one of the 4 or 5 most commonly used audio file types (after MP3, WAV and maybe WMV), and Apple's denial of it resulting in 3rd party workarounds isn't excusable.

Most of that is irrelevant. If you convert to AIFF as an intermediate step, you can use wavegain to "replay gain" the file, then convert to ALAC. AIFF supports metadata so you shouldn't lose any in the conversion process.

No it wouldn't, but since they never, ever will it's better to use a solution that actually works rather than pointlessly whinging about it.

So, double converting is your solution - SO SIMPLE!

And how can you one the one hand say it wouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement, and then call my criticism of Apple "pointless whining"? Is that the AppleInsider MO here, anyone who finds fault with Apple is a "whiner"? It's disappointing that it's coming from a moderator.

Who has been recommending spotify as an alternative? You're the first to mention it in this thread.

No one, nor did I suggest it.

Just pointing out that Spotify is probably one of more commonly used alternative ways of listening to music on a computer, and the interface on that is also grey, with many similarities to iTunes. Why the aggression?

And how can you one the one hand say it wouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement, and then call my criticism of Apple "pointless whining"? Is that the AppleInsider MO here, anyone who finds fault with Apple is a "whiner"? It's disappointing that it's coming from a moderator.

It's pointless whining to say a company should add something simply because you want it. (Note: I haven't been following the whole thread so I don't know if that is what you're doing.)

Apple is a company sonit's ultimately up to them as it suits their needs as a company. So far, they haven't added any codecs under Xiph.org and their statement ofnitnbeing free and open may interrupted if deep pockets Sartre supporting it in a large scale.

As Mr. H stated, it's not an issue of coding difficulty (especially considering that you drop a FLAC codec into the QuickTime file and your good to go) so there must be other reasons for their decision. It doesn't sound like you've considered these other reasons at all. Does Google or MS support FLAC?

PS: I find it odd that you want this support for iTunes. I know a few people with an interest in "openness" and none of them use iTunes. They'd never dream of it. If you say it's because you use an iDevice then you have no little recourse than to go ALAC. We're talking lossless codecs here so you don't need to multiple versions if your using iDevices and "PC"s to listen to your music. I'd say choose you battles more wisely or figure out a way to get FLAC more popular so that Apple and other can't ignore it.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Where did I say it would be simple? Anyway, once you've setup the workflow (you can script the whole process) processing newly acquired stuff wouldn't take long.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superbass

And how can you one the one hand say it wouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement, and then call my criticism of Apple "pointless whining"? Is that the AppleInsider MO here, anyone who finds fault with Apple is a "whiner"? It's disappointing that it's coming from a moderator.

I'm not making excuses for Apple. I'm just being realistic: they will never add FLAC support to iTunes or iDevices. So, if you want access to these FLAC files on your iDevices, you should spend your energies on creating the necessary workflow for processing the FLAC you buy so that it's playable on your devices. The technology is out there. You can do it with no loss of quality. All I'm doing is suggesting that you need to accept that Apple will never add FLAC to iAnything and deal with the situation in a manner that results in the music you want playable on the devices you want.

It seems at first sight to replace my genius bar with a Ping bar and give me no option to return it. This is a shame since literally the *only* good thing about the Genius thing is the genius bar connection to iTunes.

Also seems to screw up a lot of my cover art.

I'm getting really sick of the crap they are folding into iTunes that doesn't give you the option of removing it. The "Genius mixes" (that I don't ever want to see but are un-removeable), jumping in your face every time you sync are bad enough, and they might want to fix the broken implementation of cover-flow first also.

I wish there was a serious alternative out there that wasn't going to give users more hassle than Apples implementation of iTunes does.

I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.

I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.

I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.

I am sure Apple has been working on a group up rewrite in Cocoa, but this won't be easier. Unless their other apps, iTunes has additional challenges. Though I did expect them to have it ready for this last release. Besides it needing to be done, last year they added files that refer to iTunes as iTunesX and using QuickTime as an example, thatbrewrite took it from QT 7.x to QT X. I thought they would be ready in 2010. Maybe next year as it needs it, but at least this last version is faster for me.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.

I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.

I don't see any "iTunes Killers" out there, I also have no issue with performance, stability or function within iTunes, my library is stored on an external hard drive and I have no issues.

Also, let's not forget it's free.

If there is any other free software out there that does all that iTunes does, I'd love to use it - choice is great. But what I hear is a lot of vague complaints about "performance" and the "suck factor" without anything specific, or any specific suggestions for improvement in functionality...

I am sure Apple has been working on a group up rewrite in Cocoa, but this won't be easier. Unless their other apps, iTunes has additional challenges. Though I did expect them to have it ready for this last release. Besides it needing to be done, last year they added files that refer to iTunes as iTunesX and using QuickTime as an example, thatbrewrite took it from QT 7.x to QT X. I thought they would be ready in 2010. Maybe next year as it needs it, but at least this last version is faster for me.

Problem is that once it goes cocoa, it won't run on PPC and there will be massive complaints from the legacy user base...

I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.

I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.

I just turn off all the crap/stuff-I-don't-use (iTunes DJ, Genius, Sound Enhancer, Sound Check (I use replay gain; Sound Check sucks), Podcasts) and it works really well for me. Admittedly I don't like what they've done with iTunes 10, but the solution is simple: I haven't "upgraded" and will stick with version 9.

I don't see any "iTunes Killers" out there, I also have no issue with performance, stability or function within iTunes, my library is stored on an external hard drive and I have no issues.

Also, let's not forget it's free.

If there is any other free software out there that does all that iTunes does, I'd love to use it - choice is great. But what I hear is a lot of vague complaints about "performance" and the "suck factor" without anything specific, or any specific suggestions for improvement in functionality...

As much as people complain about iTunes it’s arguably a primary reason why the iPod was able to gain so much traction and, as you say, there still isn’t anyone competing well against Apple on this front.

If Chrome OS takes off it would make sense for Apple to have a web-based iTunes app. I’m not talking about internet streaming, specifically, but thinking that Apple needs to prepare for a more universal method for managing and playing music. Using a browser-based solution can still be local, though this feature is often overlooked.

As for specifics of disliking iTunes, I have a several niggling issues, but I’ll focus on videos. My biggest annoyance is the video player not working like QuickTime. I’m not even sure iTunes uses QTX in SL to play videos. It’s slower to start than QT and can often be choppy/blocky at the first few frames to start, and is more easily affected by other processes working.

It has fast forward < > and next video |< >| buttons that don’t scrub in real time, but jump in intervals that make it hard to use those buttons for searching. It used to be if you accidentally clicked once on the FF button it would jump to the next video, which makes this annoying and buttons designed for this task redundant. Really all I want is an option in iTunes to have QuickTime be called to play the video when I click on it in iTunes, as of right now, I’m actually right-clicking, showing the source in Finder and then double-clicking it if I need to access it via iTunes.

iTunes will store files with any A/V codec files… and play them back just fine, but it has to be in an approved container, like .MOV. I’d love to have all my videos organized via iTunes but I don’t want to redo all the containers for these files even though it takes about 10 seconds for a 30 minute show. In iTunes under Get Info the Kind is “QuickTime movie file” but the codec is still the same. I could also use a Reference Link which creates a .MOV files that points to the content. This works, too, and is nearly instant to make. This also shows up as a “QuickTime movie file”. The only way you know it’s not the source file is the size, which is usually in the hundreds of kilobytes.

I think we know that iDevices can’t play all file types, and it lets us know which ones it didn’t transfer over during a sync. So why not allow me to store all A/V files in iTunes, making it a true media organizer? They still don’t have to support the codecs on iDevices, or even in Mac OS X; let the 3rd partyies offer us the codecs.

I guess what I’m looking for is two-fold: 1) Consistency between media players, and 2) making media content storage and organization “no holds barred”. Is that specific enough?

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Pearl Jam (everything)
David Byrne
Nine Inch Nails (Reznor's website states that over 20% of sales are FLAC)
Brian Eno
The Eagles
The Beatles (they sell a complete works in FLAC USB drive on their website)
Bonnaroo Festival (complete concerts from the past several festivals)
Tallis Scholars (complete works)
Paul McCartney (last couple albums)
Merge Records (sells everything as FLAC - you might recognize Arcade Fire, Superchunk and Caribou as some of their artists)

are just a few of the "big" artists who sell their music as FLAC. Check their websites. Also, there are a ton of smaller jazz labels releasing in FLAC. I don't listen to much top 40, so I don't know about the major labels, but they're not exactly the most progressive organizations out there. Sure they're not sold on iTunes, but that's a given.

Add to that list Palace Records and the Daytrotter site.

I've sent a feature request to Apple about the FLAC codec. I'm very skeptical it will ever come to pass, which is why I'm strongly considering the workarounds suggested in this thread, or dropping iTunes all together. Lossless data portability does not seem to be a top priority for the player unfortunately.

I just turn off all the crap/stuff-I-don't-use (iTunes DJ, Genius, Sound Enhancer, Sound Check (I use replay gain; Sound Check sucks), Podcasts) and it works really well for me. Admittedly I don't like what they've done with iTunes 10, but the solution is simple: I haven't "upgraded" and will stick with version 9.

Agreed for the most part, but I would argue that while "not upgrading" is a fix it's not really a solution if you Grok the difference.

Also, my main complaints (at the top of the thread), are simply:

- Ping appears to replace the genius bar which is the only useful part of Genius for a lot of folks.
- There doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of "Genius mixes" even when genius is disabled.

After some research, it seems that the complaint about grey icons is basically lame in that other similar programs are similarly adorned, and that the complaint about the Ping drop-down being everywhere is especially lame because it's more or less what people were asking for just last week.

It seems that the reason the Ping drop-down is everywhere, is so that you can "like" music in your iTunes Library that you didn't actually purchase from the iTunes store. It doesn't seem to work very well, but given that this is likely it's purpose and that everyone was initially complaining about this very thing, it's hard to see this as a valid complaint. It seems like a very practical way to achieve that goal IMO.

- Ping appears to replace the genius bar which is the only useful part of Genius for a lot of folks.
- There doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of "Genius mixes" even when genius is disabled.

I dont an issue with either of these. Ping is listed under Store in the side bar and Genius under its own section in the side bar. Under the Genius category is Genius, Genius Mixes and all the Genius playlists Ive created and theyre all easily removable.

duh Just because you are going straight has no bearing on whether a compass is pointing forward. You should learn what a compass is for before complaining that it doesn't work.

All of the electronics in your car affect your compass. Try standing outside away from electronics. Makes a big difference. Don't even use the compass to test. Just use the maps application that came with your phone. If you don't know what the needle in a compass is....stop using the compass. Just use the map app and see if things are pointing in the right direction on that.

Ping is poorly implemented. I'm surprised this site has not reviewed Ping at all. It is a buggy kludgy pile of junk. I had such high hopes for using it. I'm downloading this update to see if my mind is changed about that.

Basically enabling Ping destroyed my iTunes account so I can't purchase from the iTunes store. I've complained 3 times to Apple with no response. I fine with them not wanting my money. Hopefully this doesn't affect too many people, but I guess we'll see that in the quarterly financial numbers.

I'm confused...how can Ping affect you buying stuff? What is happening when you try to buy content from iTunes?

I'm confused...how can Ping affect you buying stuff? What is happening when you try to buy content from iTunes?

he may be talking about iTunes 10 causing issues with Credit Cards for some users. I dont see how Ping could prevent one from being able to purchase items, in fact, its design to help facilitate more purcahses via social networking.

I don’t an issue with either of these. Ping is listed under Store in the side bar and Genius under it’s own section in the side bar. Under the Genius category is Genius, Genius Mixes and all the Genius playlists I’ve created and they’re all easily removable.

Thanks for the tip. I have been putting words like "apparently" before my statements about it being missing.

In any regard I don't see the same thing. I have genius enabled, but all I see is the button at the bottom right that used to enable the genius bar, now enables the Ping bar. When the Ping bar is open it's just blank. There are no sub-tabs or options that I can see.

Mostly I'm okay with iTunes, I even got used to the horrid icon. I think overall what's happening here is that Apple's penchant fro not giving the user a lot of control choices in preferences (the kind of thing that would fix all the complaints on this thread), is falling down philosophically with iTunes simply because iTunes has become such a huge bloated program and is so many things to so many people.

Keeping choice to a minimum *is* the best design philosophy, but it kind of assumes that the software itself is simple, directed, and easy to use in the first place. iTunes is the closest thing Apple has to a "Microsoftian" or open source kind of program in that it's become this giant confusing, unmanageable suite of stuff. In this particular case, more control, in the way of letting us have more detailed preferences is the obvious cure but it goes against everything Apple says it stands for design-wise. What Apple isn't seeing so far is that the behemoth that is iTunes basically goes against everything Apple stands for anyway.

The biggest clue that lack of preferences for such a complicated program is the problem is that people are freely passing around the terminal commands that fix this or that thing, far more than they every used to. It was rare (even in the recent past) for anyone to care about it that much. Now every time Apple comes out with a new version it's the first thing you see on the forums. You even see this kind of advice on non-tech sites now. If I was Apple I'd take it as a sign and act on it quickly.

Thanks for the tip. I have been putting words like "apparently" before my statements about it being missing.

In any regard I don't see the same thing. I have genius enabled, but all I see is the button at the bottom right that used to enable the genius bar, now enables the Ping bar. When the Ping bar is open it's just blank. There are no sub-tabs or options that I can see..

This is what I have in my sidebar. I have actually deleted all my personal Genius mixes as I realized I dont listen to them anymore, but they were all listed directly underneath.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Ping is even more irritating than it was before. In your music library it appears as a graphic link next to any track title you click on, and is takes up three lines in the right click menu. These features remain even if you hide the sidebar.
Ping is such a poor product and being pushed so intrusively.

Yup, we're being drowned in, it I can barely see my iTunes interface anymore.

lol.

Can anyone explain to me what is complicated, stress inducing or "difficult" about the iTunes experience, a screen grab below of my iTunes. Can't think of anything simpler or more intuitive.

Removing the Genius Sidebar is a big mistake by Apple, and pretty arrogant. Apparently Ping is the only way to "discover" new music now, by following specific people and artists and seeing what they do. No thanks!

I irony is, I only started using the Genius Sidebar yesterday, before I got notified of the update. It's new to me and I love it. I've downgraded to 10.0.0 to get it back, but Apple could turn it off on their end because it depends on the iTunes Store.

I hope Apple gets a lot of negative feedback and restores the Genius Sidebar in the next update.

That screenshot shows the Genius section in the source pane, it does not show the Genius sidebar. The Genius sidebar is gone in 10.0.1.

I now see what you are saying and notice you did capitalized it to mean specifically Genius Sidebar, but you should note that the main, default side bar that list Genius is more commonly referred to the side bar, not a source bar.

Now I understand what you and others are referring to I’m so glad that is gone. I turned that off almost immediately after Genius came. Hated it. It was pointless advertising that got in the way of my music. I use Genius all the time for playlists, but not their Genius suggestions. That isn’t how I ever want to find new music. Though it’s too bad Apple can’t offer both solutions to users then see which is more beneficial, but it could be that sales via the Genius Sidebar was too low to warrant keeping it.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

This is what I have in my sidebar. I have actually deleted all my personal Genius mixes as I realized I dont listen to them anymore, but they were all listed directly underneath.

That's not the genius sidebar.

But unrelated to the sidebar issue ... If anyone can tell me how to get rid of those genius mixes I'd be very happy. They have been bugging me since day one.

The first time they appeared, one couldn't alter them at all, but only add one's own genius mixes, then they made it so you can delete them, but you can only delete "all but one." You *must (according to Apple), have at least one. However, several times (not just on updates), all the genius lists recreated themselves wholesale for me. They keep coming back like a bad penny.

This is especially irritating in that when you sync a device, they are listed first, and the toggle is auto-set to "open" so they take up (on my monitor) about an inch and a half of the two and a half inches of vertical space in the playlist window. You have to hit the toggle arrow every single f*ing time to get your vertical space back. This is with Genius *disabled* as well.

This is a nightmare for me in that I have hundreds of playlists and I have to scroll down every time I sync when I don't ever use genius lists, nor do I ever want to see them.

For me (the reverse of your situation probably), the genius playlists have never worked, because they just work off of the "genre" field for the most part, and most of the music I listen to is either "indie" or "alternative" so a list that mashes everything indie or everything alternative together is never useful. Genres hardly even matter in music anymore but iTunes Genius seems to rely on it heavily.

The only thing useful for me in regards Genius, was the sidebar because it took you to a list of all the music from the selected band with suggestions of related material. I actually endured the horror of the "can't remove em" genius lists in my sync solely because I liked the genius sidebar.

I think the main takeaway overall is that iTunes *is* a huge multi-faceted program that does many different things and is used in many different ways by lots of people. So to my mind, restricting the UI and the preferences the way Apple does with their software, is in *this* case, possibly the worst thing they could do and is actively screwing over their customers.

My only hope is they realise this soon. There is no alternative to iTunes really so we have to grin and bear it.

As stated earlier, I see that is Genius in the main side bar, not the Genius Sidebar. Mea culpa, but I do think some clarification could have been used knowing that there is a chance for ambiguity.

Quote:

But unrelated to the sidebar issue ... If anyone can tell me how to get rid of those genius mixes I'd be very happy. They have been bugging me since day one.

I right/Option-clicked mine and choose Remove or Delete, depending if yo are talking about Genius Mixes or Genius Playlists, respectively. You can also choose Hide next to Genius so you don’t have to see them.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Just pointing out that Spotify is probably one of more commonly used alternative ways of listening to music on a computer, and the interface on that is also grey, with many similarities to iTunes. Why the aggression?

I didn't mean to seem aggressive, just the mention of Spotify seemed to come from nowhere. I was mentally wondering if you replied to the wrong thread, where some other thread someone suggested it to fix their objections to iTunes. I've heard of Spotify in passing, but I don't remember anyone on this or other forums I read mentioning Spotify, maybe it's just too obscure to have heard of complaints of the software?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superbass

(snipped big list of artists & labels)

Fluke won't make songs play on an iPod, and still has pretty limited functionality in terms of tagging, album art, etc.

There's really no reason to continue with the back-and-forth and make excuses for apple, it's probably one of the 4 or 5 most commonly used audio file types (after MP3, WAV and maybe WMV), and Apple's denial of it resulting in 3rd party workarounds isn't excusable.

I could have sworn there was a converter that dynamically converted FLAC items on iPod sync, but I can't find it now.

Unfortunately, it may well be one of those occasions to dump the iTunes/iPod. Even the 4th most popular audio format might be well below Apple's radar.